Second Life

What is Second Life ?

A 3-D virtual world entirely built and owned by its residents.

Second Life (SL), the three-dimensional virtual world where users, called residents, can preten­d to be whomever — or whatever — they want to be. Although it’s an online environment, its influence reaches into the real world including a virtual economy that’s dependent upon actual money. In reality, or perhaps virtual reality, Second Life is a complex environment filled with potential risks and rewards.

Linden Lab

Second Life is an online environment created by Linden Lab, a company based in San Francisco. SL is an online world in which residents create virtual representations of themselves, called avatars, and interact with other avatars, places or objects. Second Life isn’t just a fancy chat room — residents can do much more than communicate with one another. They can contribute to the world around them, creating buildings, objects or even animations. Resident additions to the virtual world are called user-generated content, and this content is one of the factors that makes Second Life such a unique online environment. User-generated content also explains why Second Life is for adults only — Linden Lab places few restrictions on residents, meaning that you can see some rather crude creations while you’re exploring the environment.

What you can Do

In SL, residents can go to social gatherings, live concerts, press conferences and even college classes. They can do a lot of things you can do in real life — buy land, shop for clothes and gadgets or just visit with friends. They can also do things that are impossible in the real world — avatars can fly or teleport to almost any location. Several residents design short programs, called scripts, which give avatars or objects new abilities, including special animations or the ability to generate copies of other objects.

Goals & Task

Second Life is comparable to Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games(MMORPGs). Similar to MMORPG, users represent themselves with a customizable, three-dimensional figure that acts like a computer-generated creature. Users travel through an online world, encountering strange landscapes and new people. Different from MMORPGs, residents in Second Life aren’t in a game, though there are games inside Second Life’s virtual environment. They inhabit a virtual world free of pre-determined goals or tasks, similar to the real world.